Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
For several reasons, it is highly desirable to identify counterfeit or fraudulent documents, such as to identify fraudulent products with counterfeit packaging and/or other identifying information. Advancing technology, such as improved software applications, printers and copiers, has enabled the proliferation of counterfeit documents. For example, grey market or knock-off goods are difficult to distinguish from authentic and/or authorized goods. Identifying a product as authentic based on its packaging or other documentation is especially important when dealing with products, such as pharmaceutical products, where the effect of a counterfeit product may be life-threatening. As additional examples, a counterfeit vehicle title can be very costly to an unsuspecting purchaser, and fake coupons can be costly to a business. Therefore, it is important to develop a method for providing tamper-resistant security information in documents along with the ability to readily authenticate that security information.
Websites may be used to market and sell goods and services. For example, a merchant may operate a website to sell various products to users of the site. For example, a bank of government may operate a website to allow users of the site to access user-specific financial or regulatory information. In some cases, counterfeit or fraudulent products are offered online. In some industries, the bulk of non-authentic goods are sold online as opposed to in brick and mortar retail establishments. In addition, counterfeit websites may be used to induce users into divulging user-specific information, such as financial information, social security information, tax information, etc.
Website security protocols have been developed to allow for secure transmission of information between a user and certain websites using public/private encryption (e.g., a secure socket layer (SSL) encryption and the like). Such security protocols help to prevent information transmitted between a user's terminal and a website server from being intercepted, but they do not generally inform a user whether the website server is an authentic site as opposed to a counterfeit.